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Shorts Have Men Showing a Little Leg

Steven Rojas of GrandLife Hotels mixes shorts with a Marni blazer and 3.1 Phillip Lim shoes.Credit
Craig Arend for The New York Times

EARLIER this season on the MTV series “Savage U,” Dan Savage, the syndicated sex columnist, was asked if he wears shorts. His response was as immediate as it was dismissive: “No, no. I’m a grown-up.”

It’s a sentiment echoed by many style arbiters: men of a certain age and distinction, the thinking goes, cannot wear shorts and be taken seriously. This applies not only to the workplace, but also in social settings.

Much of the fashion establishment seems to agree. “I avoid them,” said Glenn O’Brien, the fashion editor and writer of GQ magazine’s “Style Guy.” “If it’s like 100 degrees, or if I’m just going to Whole Foods, I will break down and wear shorts, but I try to avoid them for business.”

Tom Ford put it this way, in a guide on “how to be a modern gentleman” in AnOther Magazine: “Rule No. 5: A man should never wear shorts in the city.”

“What’s happening right now is there are a lot of designers saying, ‘Wait a minute, shorts can be as dressy as a pair of trousers, if they’re tailored right and the details are right,” said Tyler Thoreson, the editorial director of Park & Bond, the retail Web site

Leading this knobby pack is the designer Thom Browne, who wore slim gray shorts of his own design, paired with a matching gray vest and black loafers, to his Paris men’s-wear show in July. “In my world, shorts are always appropriate,” he said, giving exception to certain places of business, like law firms.

Mr. Browne’s slim-fitting collections have long featured shorts, often paired with shrunken jackets — their crisp lines, double vents and narrow lapels harkening back to the 1960s. “That’s why I feel they’re appropriate for the city,” he said. “Because of the way they’re tailored, they are as dressed as a pair of long trousers.”

Indeed, in dapper pockets of New York City like Williamsburg and the Lower East Side, well-dressed men can be spotted at brunch, running errands and going to the flea market in dress shorts, often worn with summer blazers and gingham shirts.

This attitude has not just pervaded North America, but Europe as well, where fashionable young men don’t shy from wearing shorts to pick up a baguette in the Marais, or hail a black cab in Hoxton Square.

“I’ve definitely noticed more men on both sides of the Atlantic wearing shorts in cities,” said Frank Muytjens, the chief men’s-wear designer for J. Crew. “Shorts have a dressier element. Guys are more conscious than ever about the fit, fabric and design, and are wearing shorts with a dress shirt, a suit jacket and with a great pair of brogues or a desert boot.”

Students of men’s fashion know that shorts were not always relegated to the schoolyard. In pre-Victorian times, breeches — the ancestor of shorts, tight pants that ended just below the knee — were customary formal wear.

“Breeches highlighted the part of the leg between the knee and the foot,” said Farid Chenoune, author of “A History of Men’s Fashion” (Flammarion). “It was part of a code of masculine beauty to have a perfect leg, especially the calf muscle, following the lines of ancient Greek and Roman sculpture. This was the model. It was supposed to be very sexy.”

Breeches eventually fell out of favor. Meanwhile, in the 19th century, shorts became part of the boys’ uniforms at British and American boarding schools. Hence, the expression, “I’ve known him since he was in short pants.”

After World War I, a rise in resorts, particularly in Europe, allowed men to wear shorts in more casual settings. “It’s this whole idea of Riviera clothing,” said Patrick Hughes, a fashion professor at Parsons the New School for Design in New York. “If you look at the growth of leisure capitals — the Côte d’Azur in the ’20s and ’30s — then that’s where you start to see shorts coming around.”

But it was one thing to wear shorts by the seaside, quite another thing to wear them in the city. It would take the social upheaval of the 1960s, along with the growing influence of California beach and surf culture, to bring that about.

Yet to this day, a stigma against shorts as proper attire remains. “I know people who will not wear shorts under any circumstances,” said Chris Black, the editor of the popular men’s-wear blog Words for Young Men. “There are these rules, like ‘Do not wear white after Labor Day,’ that some guys take very seriously. They take their cues from the higher-ups, like Tom Ford.”

The current revival, if one can call it that, is reflected in recent men’s-wear shows in New York, Paris and elsewhere. While the trend is not new, shorts now appear with some regularity at men’s-wear shows by designers as varied as Michael Bastian, Giorgio Armani, Tommy Hilfiger and Prada.

One designer, James Long, had his 20 models walk in nothing but shorts during his London Men’s Fashion Week show in June. Many men, of course, don’t take their fashion cues directly from the runway. So when it comes to actually pulling off dress shorts, they are flummoxed. The first question is fit.

“The trick is to get the length right,” said Brian Coats, a contributing editor at GQ. “Usually just above the knee. Never any longer or you risk veering off into Capri pants territory.”

Nickelson Wooster, men’s creative director at J. C. Penney, takes it further. “Men’s shorts should fit imaculately and hit at the right length in proportion to his height,” he said. “I’m no geometry major, but most guys look great when shorts hit just above the knee and are cut slim around the leg. This length and fit feels modern and clean.”

The more difficult question is footwear. Mr. Browne and Mr. Thoreson suggest wingtips, while Bonnie Morrison, a brand consultant and a former editor of Men’s Vogue, recommends a Blucher moccasin, loafer or worn-in lace-up instead. For more casual looks, Ms. Morrison suggests a boat shoe or an Adidas Stan Smith sneaker. Flip-flops are out.

And then comes the issue of socks. Strong views are expressed. “Never,” Ms. Morrison said. “A sock with shorts is like tights with shorts on women.” But Patrik Sandberg, 27, an editor at the high-fashion magazines V and Vman, stands firmly at the other end of the spectrum. “It’s time for everybody to put some socks on,” he argued. “Nobody in SoHo wants to see your ankles.”

By comparison, what to wear on top is a cinch. Pairing shorts with long-sleeve oxford shirts is always a good idea, mostly tucked, but in a few cases untucked, with Mr. Wooster and Mr. Thoreson recommending a jacket as well, if temperatures allow.

But at the end of the (hot, sticky) day, the bias against shorts may come down to something much more basic (and vain) than concerns about etiquette: some men simply don’t like how their legs look, and assume it will turn off potential mates.

“If a woman were trying to assess a man’s masculinity, they could look at his face, or his chest ratio,” said Dr. Viren Swami, who studies the psychology of attraction at the University of Westminster, in London. “There are better ways to do it than to look at his legs.”

A version of this article appears in print on August 19, 2012, on page ST5 of the New York edition with the headline: Shorts Have Men Showing a Little Leg. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe